Coronavirus, Global Governance, Public Health Trump, WHO, and Half a Century of Global Health Austerity

On April 14, with 8,300 recorded deaths in the United States from COVID-19, President Trump announced that he was suspending funding to the World Health Organization (WHO). “With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have deep concerns whether America’s generosity has been put to the best use possible,” Trump said during his nightly press briefing. The president called for a sixty-day suspension of aid to the WHO; a resumption would occur on indefinite terms and on an unspecified date, if at all. 

Trump’s decision is indeed unprecedented. Not once in its over seventy-year history has the United States altogether cut off its funding for the WHO, an organization created under the auspices of maintaining a peaceful and prosperous postwar order following World War II. According to many foreign policy experts, this was another example of Trump’s unique hostility toward the “liberal international order” over which the United States has presided since 1945. “We are basically handing more influence over to Beijing,” said Yanzhong Hang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denounced Trump’s decision as one that is “dangerous, illegal and will be swiftly challenged.”  

Read more in Boston Review >>